Ray Vecchio is an Asshole
by shaemichelle
Summary: A reflection on how Ray K would feel.


**(Disclaimer: due South belongs to its creators, distributers, and other people/investors/companies affiliated with it and it's original/secondary airings. No profit is made from this story, no infringment is intended.)**

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**,**Ray Vecchio is an asshole. That's what I've decided. I _am_ him, you know, and that's cool, cause if you just meet him, or even if you know him pretty well, he's alright. Decent. But I don't know him, I am him so I know he's an asshole. And I know his best friend. See, I, as Ray Vecchio, was Fraser's best friend. And in the course of acting like Fraser's best friend, I actually became Fraser's best friend. At least, he's my best friend. He knows everything about me. And I can tell you a lot of stuff about Fraser.

Did you know his mother was murdered when he was six? Did you know he saw the whole thing? He doesn't remember it very clearly, and he remembers his mother even less. I mean, he was only six, but he feels really guilty that he doesn't remember her very well, that he doesn't remember her murder. He remembers blaming her, in his little six-year-old mind, for leaving him and making his daddy sad and making Daddy leave too. Which is normal if you're six, but Fraser thinks he's supposed to be perfect, not normal.

Frase is really smart too. But he only has about three years of formal schooling outside his Mountie training to his name (Grade four, grade six, a tiny bit of seventh and the final two semesters of grade twelve). He was pretty much raised by librarians, and spent the vast majority of his childhood learning how to be good at everything because there was nothing else to do. Not another kid for thousands of miles.

His grandmother slowly wasted away to cancer, and Fraser was the one who took care of her while his grandfather worked the library. She refused to go to the hospital for a long time, so Fraser gets really freaked when I refuse to go after I get what he calls "close to seriously injured". He can jump off roofs and get hit by cars, but god forbid I fall down the stairs when I'm drunk. He thinks (subconsciously) if he catches the injury or sickness soon enough, I won't die.

When his grandmother finally died after a two year struggle in the hospital she hated, not only did her son (Fraser's dad) not try and come back from patrol to see the funeral, but George Fraser died a day after his wife.

"He died of a broken heart," Fraser had explained. I was touched for about ten seconds, until Fraser swallowed his sip of milk and continued. "Predominantly, I mean, the majority of his internal organs were broken. Frankly, the steering wheel crushed his entire torso when his Jeep was hit by that truck. He was rather drunk at the time, and ever since I couldn't look at his favored whisky, let alone drink at all myself."

Fraser's dad "lived" in Inuvik at the time, so nerdy, lonely seventeen-year-old Benton moved down after attending both funerals alone to live pretty much alone till his dad returned from patrol a few days after his high school graduation. Now he's kinda trapped in Chicago until the RCMP will let him back into Canada.

You'd never know it, but Fraser is a tiny bit afraid of seaweed, or lake-weed, I guess. We once ended up in a lake other than Michigan, and the water was healthy enough for seaweed. We were swimming to shore when Fraser flipped over onto his back in the water, his head ducking under, loosing his protective grip on me completely. I thought he'd been bitten by a shark or something. He came back up a few seconds later, panting and pale, shakily admitting seaweed had tangled his ankle and he may have overreacted. It happened like four times on our way back to shore. I guess the lakes he swam in as a kid were too cold for seaweed or he didn't swim too often.

He's also afraid of flying. Like in a plane, I mean. He hates it. He absolutely despises it. Unless he can focus on finding a criminal or on not falling off the wing of the plane, he becomes a nervous nutcase. I think he had a bad experience on a plane once. He'd rather walk where ever he's flying to.

He sucks at driving too. It's not his element. He'll drive the posted limit, no matter what, and he'll obey traffic laws traffic cops don't even know exist. He sounds like a good driver, but he gets all nervous and jerky, and he knows he's bad at it and that makes it worse. He didn't learn to drive a car till he was in his twenties, in his defense, I guess. Plus he can't ride a bike. I tried to teach him once. He can't do it.

But he can speak like eight languages. His mother taught him French, his father taught him some Native languages, and his grandparents taught him two dialects of Chinese. He learned Russian as a teen, and German and sign language and who knows what else. He only knows about dozen words of Polish tho, enough he can tell me "Hello" and "my name is" and that sort of thing. He doesn't know any Italian.

He hates needles. A lot. He didn't get vaccinations as a kid, cause his grandparents figured they didn't have any so why would he need them? Besides, then poor Benton might meet another kid his age at the doctors. When he's hurt really bad after doing something stupid and heroic, the doctors will offer some pain meds via needle (the best kind) but he'll say no. He, like, vibrates when they insist, because you're not supposed to argue with doctors but he really does not want that needle near him.

But that's all just stuff about him, it's not really him.

He is a Mountie. It's not really what he does, it's who he is. He is justice, he is law. And if you ask him why he's what he is, he doesn't know. Course, neither do I so there you are.

And he is a control freak. But for good reason I suppose. He's controlling because he loses people when he's not in control. He couldn't stop his mother's death, watched his grandmother waste away, unable to help her. He lost his granddad at random and with no warning when his granddad wasn't in control. And it's not as tho he was close with his dad, he couldn't control that relationship at all. I think Fraser feels like if he can control everything around him, I won't leave him too. That if he keeps everything in order, he can keep me safe.

Which brings me back to why Vecchio is an asshole.

He fucking left Fraser with no warning. It was like he died when Fraser wasn't around, in control, but so so so much worse. Because he wasn't dead, he was just gone. Gone. And Fraser wasn't in control at all during Vecchio's undercover stint, and it's very likely Vecchio would end up dead without Fraser being able to do jack shit.

And Vecchio knew how bad his leaving would mess up Fraser's head. He must have. But he went anyway. So he's an asshole.

See, me, I'm not an asshole. I wouldn't dare leave Fraser. I've already lined up a fake transfer to the 27th from the 16th for when Vecchio gets back, so I change names but stay here, liaison-ing with Frase.

Because he's my best friend, it's all I can do. Plus, I know Vecchio pretty well, for all I never met the guy. I read his cover sheet, his background information, the whole she-bang-she-boom.

And when he finds out that me and Fraser aren't just buddies, his buddies with Fraser isn't gonna really be a thing anymore. He's super Catholic, plus he's a cop, and he's generally not too accepting of other stuff, like his cover sheet says. And that's gonna break Fraser's heart.

Fraser won't let me be there when he tells Vecchio, I know that without us ever talking about it, but I imagine it going down like this: "Hi, Ray, I have to tell you something. I'm in love with someone. His smile gives me butterflies and the way he laughs makes me smile. Everything about him makes me happy," Frase would say, smiling and totally not expecting the reaction to be negative because in his mind gay isn't bad or even that different. He didn't (doesn't) even fully understand that not everyone was OK with two dudes being in love.

And then Vecchio will yell and make Fraser feel like he has to choose, or he'd yell and make Fraser angry that yet another person he cared about judged him and found him inadequate. Either way, Fraser is going to lose Vecchio. He'll never choose to be without me, he's told me that in other situations. He refuses to going back to being alone, having an empty apartment and only Dief in his bed at night. But for now, we live in my crappy apartment and I wake up on mornings like this, smelling pancakes or bacon or sometimes even both. Fraser's humming softly as I hear the clink of M&Ms hit the bottom of a coffee mug.

And it's times like this that I'm thankful I got the opportunity to pretend to be Vecchio the asshole. Cause I got to meet Benton Fraser, RCMP. And he's anything but an asshole. He's perfect in his imperfection and the way he says "pasta" past-a not pa-sta. Everything about him makes me happy.


End file.
